Thursday, March 5, 2009

Neocontinuity: Obama Following War Plan for Iran

Iranian children play as locals go about their daily lives on the streets of the Iranian capital, apparently undaunted by media reports of potential airstrikes by the US if relations between the two countries deteriorates further.

Moon of Alabama brings the disturbing -- if unsurprising -- news that the Obama Administration appears to be closely following a "neocon strategy against Iran" devised by many of the same good folks who brought us the war in Iraq.

Several recent policy moves -- and strategic media leaks -- by the Obama White House line up in lock-step with plans laid out by the aptly named "Bipartisan Policy Institute" to bring on a war with Iran. MoA rightly likens the BPI to our old friends at The Project for a New American Century, who openly yearned -- back in September 2000 -- for a "new Pearl Harbor" that would "catalyze" the American people into supporting their militarist agenda (which included imposing a U.S. military presence in Iraq -- whether Saddam Hussein was still in power there or not).

Indeed, BPI and PNAC share several of the same members -- including the Administration's brand-new, top dog on Iran, Dennis Ross. Once again, we see the beloved, stabilizing "continuity" which has won Obama so much praise from the Beltway mandarins. After all, if you retain the head honchos of Bush's aggressive war machine and make them your own, why not keep his wonky warmongers on tap as well?

MoA lays out the connections between BPI and BHO policy in great detail, so you should read the whole thing. But he sums it up succinctly:

So let's piece this together. We have administration officials leaking about pressure on Russia with the real target being Iran as recommended in the AEI authored study.

We have Israeli officials demanding U.S. concern by threatening independent action (with harsh negative consequences for U.S. interests in the Middle East) as recommended in the AEI authored study.

We have Israeli officials demanding several points which are take right out of the recommendations of the AEI authored study.

In the late 1990s the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), with many neocon members from the AEI, published lots of letters and recommendations that urged to attack Iraq for the hidden benefit of Israel. Several of the authors and signers of those papers joined the Bush administration and implemented that policy.

We have now another think tank that published a study and op-eds primarily written by neocon AEI members with recommendations for a new administration. They now urge to attack Iran, again for the benefit of Israel.

Dennis Ross, a signer of the various PNAC papers as well as the study discussed above and similar efforts pressing in the same direction has joined the Obama administration in a quite important position. The Financial Times wrote yesterday that another new document pressing for more Iran sanctions will be released this week:

The document, due to be released this week by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is the result of a bipartisan working group of Washington-based analysts including Dennis Ross, the administration's point-man on Iran and the Gulf, and Gary Samore and Robert Einhorn, whom Mr Obama is set to name as his top officials on non-proliferation at the White House and the State Department, respectively.

We are now quite obviously seeing the implementation of exactly the recommendations those various neocon authored studies give. Anybody who wants to understand the Obama administration's policies with regards to Iran should read these neocon and AEI influenced studies. Their recommendations are now in the process of being implemented point by point by the Obama administration under the guiding hands of Dennis Ross.

And do remember this: it took PNAC and its many fellow travellers several years to achieve their goal of raping and destroying Iraq. Our militarists and imperialists play a long game, and are not deterred by momentary setbacks or the changing political winds of any given passing moment. As we noted here last month, they press on relentlessly and remorselessly to advance their agenda: war, profit, power and dominance.

NOTE: But we should point out here, yet again, that all of these groups -- BPI, AEI, PNAC, etc. -- represent some of the various factions in the American power structure; factions which often align themselves with factions in other power structures -- Israeli, Saudi, Iraqi, Pakistani, etc. -- whenever these can be used to further the American factionists' goals. Our American elites have dragged the nation into many foolish wars down through the years; but they have always done so in pursuit of their own agendas. Our elites are not good, decent, simple souls led astray by wily foreigners; they are stone-cold operators who know what they want, and act accordingly. (For more on this theme, see Dogs of War: Hijacking National Policy and Asses Bearing Gold: Of Neocons and Nabobs.)

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